surplus food leads to rapid population growth, the rains stop, food supplies dwindle, areas that are still fertile become overcrowded, resulting in higher population density, which kicks in epigenetic reactions, and once-elegant, relaxed grasshoppers become crazed, rapacious locusts. Wings and legs get smaller, coloring shifts—not over generations, but in the individual animals. Goodbye, chilled-out grasshoppers, hello, swarming, cannibalistic locusts.
